Attack of the Clones

by R. A. Salvatore

  “I look forward to seeing them in action,” the Jedi replied.

  Jango continued to stare at him, to try to see the intent behind his words, Obi-Wan knew. And then, as if it hardly mattered, the bounty hunter gave a toothy smile. “They’ll do their job well. I’ll guarantee that.”

  “Like their source?”

  Jango Fett continued to smile.

  “Thanks for your time, Jango,” Obi-Wan said against that uncompromising stare. Then he turned to Taun We and started for the door.

  “Always a pleasure to meet a Jedi,” came the reply. It was heavy with double meaning, almost like a veiled threat.

  But Obi-Wan wasn’t about to call him on it. Jango Fett was clearly a dangerous man, streetwise and cunning, and likely better than most with any weapon handy. Before he pushed things any further, Obi-Wan realized that he should relay all that he had learned thus far back to Coruscant and the Jedi Council. This discovery of a clone army was nothing short of amazing, and more than a little unsettling, and none of it made much sense.

  And was Jango the rocket-man Obi-Wan had seen in Coruscant that night when Padmé Amidala had been attacked?

  Obi-Wan’s gut told him that Jango was, but how did that jibe with the man also being the host for a clone army supposedly commissioned by a former Jedi Master?

  With Taun We beside him, the Jedi left the apartment, and the door slid closed behind him. Obi-Wan paused and focused his senses back, even reaching out with the Force.

  The door lock quietly secured.

  “It was his starfighter, wasn’t it, Dad?” Boba Fett asked. “He’s a Jedi Knight, so he can use the Arfour-Pea.”

  Jango gave his son an absent nod.

  “I knew it!” Boba squealed, but then Jango abruptly stole the moment.

  Jango fixed Boba with a no-nonsense look that the young boy had learned well not to ignore.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  “Pack your things. We’re leaving.”

  Boba started to reply, but—

  “Now,” the bounty hunter said, and Boba practically tripped over himself, scrambling for his bedroom.

  Jango Fett shook his head. He didn’t need this aggravation. Not at this time. Not for the first time, the bounty hunter questioned his decision to take the contract against Padmé Amidala. He had been surprised when the Trade Federation had approached him with the offer. They had been adamant, explaining only that the death of the Senator was critical to securing necessary allies, and they had made an offer too lucrative for Jango to refuse, one that would set him and Boba up forever on a planet of their choosing.

  Little had Jango known, though, that taking the contract on Senator Amidala would put him in the crosshairs of the Jedi Knights.

  He looked across the way to Boba.

  That was not a place he wanted to be at this time. Not at all.

  Padmé awoke suddenly, her senses immediately tuning in to her surroundings. Something was wrong, she knew instinctively, and she jumped up, scrambling about out of fear that another of those centipede creatures was upon her.

  But her room was quiet, with nothing out of place.

  Something had awakened her, but not something in here.

  “No!” came a cry from the adjoining bedroom, where Anakin was sleeping. “No! Mom! No, don’t!”

  Padmé slipped out of bed and ran to the door, not even bothering to grab a robe, not even caring or noticing that she was wearing a revealing silken shift. At the door, she paused and listened. Hearing cries from within, followed by more jumbled yelling, she realized that there was no immediate danger, that this was another of Anakin’s nightmares, like the one that had gripped him on the shuttle ride to Naboo. She opened the door and looked in on him.

  He was thrashing about on the bed, yelling “Mom!” repeatedly. Unsure, Padmé started in.

  But then Anakin calmed and rolled back over, the dream, the vision, apparently past.

  Then Padmé did become aware of her revealing dress. She moved back through the door, shutting it gently, then waited for a long while. When she heard no further screaming or tossing, she went back to her bed.

  She lay awake in the dark for a long, long while, thinking of Anakin, thinking that she wanted to be in there beside him, holding him, helping him through his troubled dreams. She tried to dismiss the notion—they had already covered this dangerous ground and had come to an understanding of what must be. And that agreement did not include her climbing into bed beside Anakin.

  The next morning, she found him on the east balcony of the lodge, overlooking the lake and the budding sunrise. He was standing by the balustrade, so deep in thought that he did not notice her approach.

  She moved up slowly, not wanting to disturb him, for as she neared, she realized that he was doing more than thinking here, that he was actually deep in meditation. Recognizing this as a private time for Anakin, she turned and started away, as quietly as she could.

  “Don’t go,” Anakin said to her.

  “I don’t want to disturb you,” she told him, surprised.

  “Your presence is soothing.”

  Padmé considered those words for a bit, taking pleasure in hearing them, then scolding herself for taking that pleasure. But still, as she stood there looking upon him, his face now serene, she couldn’t deny the attraction. He seemed to her like a young hero, a budding Jedi—and she had no doubt that he would be among the greatest that great Order had ever known. And at the same time, he seemed to her to be the same little kid she had known during the war with the Trade Federation, inquisitive and impetuous, aggravating and charming all at once.

  “You had a nightmare again last night,” she said quietly, when Anakin at last opened his blue eyes.

  “Jedi don’t have nightmares,” came the defiant reply.

  “I heard you,” Padmé was quick to answer.

  Anakin turned to regard her. There was no compromise in her expression—she knew perfectly well that his claim was ludicrous, and she let him know that she knew it.

  “I saw my mother,” he admitted, lowering his gaze. “I saw her as clearly as I see you now. She is suffering, Padmé. They’re killing her! She is in pain!”

  “Who?” Padmé asked, moving toward him, putting a hand on his shoulder. When she looked at him more closely, she noted a determination so solid that it took her by surprise.

  “I know I’m disobeying my mandate to protect you,” Anakin tried to explain. “I know I will be punished and possibly thrown out of the Jedi Order, but I have to go.”

  “Go?”

  “I have to help her! I’m sorry, Padmé,” he said. She saw from his expression that he meant it, that leaving her was the last thing he ever wanted to do. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Of course you don’t. Not if your mother is in trouble.”

  Anakin gave her an appreciative nod.

  “I’ll go with you,” she decided.

  Anakin’s eyes widened. He started to reply, ready to argue, but Padmé’s smile held his words in check.

  “That way, you can continue to protect me,” she reasoned. Somehow she made it sound perfectly logical. “And you won’t be disobeying your mandate.”

  “I don’t think this is what the Jedi Council had in mind. I fear that I’m walking into danger, and to take you with me—”

  “Walking into danger,” Padmé echoed, and she laughed aloud. “A place I’ve never been before.”

  Anakin stared at her, hardly believing what he was hearing. He couldn’t resist, though, and his smile, too, began to widen. For some reason he did not quite understand, the Padawan found a good measure of justification in his abandoning the letter of his orders now that Padmé was in on, and agreeing with, the plan.

  Neither Padmé nor Anakin could miss the stark contrast when they took her sleek starship out of hyperspace and saw the brown planet of Tatooine looming before them. How different it was from Naboo, a place of green grasses and deep blue water, with cloud patterns swirling all acro
ss it. Tatooine was just a ball of brown hanging in space, as barren as Naboo was alive.

  “Home again, home again, to go to rest,” Anakin recited, a common children’s rhyme.

  “By hearth and heart, house and nest,” Padmé added.

  Anakin looked over at her, pleasantly surprised. “You know it?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “I don’t know,” Anakin said. “I mean, I wasn’t sure if anyone else … I thought it was a rhyme my mother made up for me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Padmé said. “Maybe she did—maybe hers was different than the one my mother used to tell me.”

  Anakin shook his head doubtfully, but he wasn’t bothered by the possibility. In a strange way, he was glad that Padmé knew the rhyme, glad that it was a common gift from mothers to their children.

  And glad, especially, that he and Padmé had yet another thing in common.

  “They haven’t signaled any coordinates yet,” she noted.

  “They probably won’t, unless we ask,” Anakin replied. “Things aren’t very strict here, usually. Just find a place and park it, then hope no one steals it while you go about your business.”

  “As lovely as I remember it.”

  Anakin looked at her and nodded. How different things were now than that decade before when Padmé had been forced to land on Tatooine with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in order to effect repairs on their ship. He tried to manage a smile, but the edge of his nervousness kept it from appearing genuine. Too many disturbing thoughts assaulted him. Was his mother all right? Was his dream a premonition of what was to come, or a replay of something that had already happened?

  He brought the ship down fast, breaking through the atmosphere and soaring across the sky. “Mos Espa,” he explained when the skyscape of the city came into sight against the horizon.

  He went in hard, and some protests did squeal over the comlink. But Anakin knew his way around this place as surely as if he had never left. He did a flyby over the edge of the city, then put the starship down in a large landing bay amid a jumble of vessels of all merchant and mercenary classes.

  “Yous can’t just drop in uninvited!” barked the dock officer, a stout creature with a piggish face and spikes running down the length of his back and tail.

  “It’s a good thing you invited us, then,” Anakin said calmly, with a slight wave of his hand.

  “Yes, it’s a good thing I invited you then!” the officer happily replied, and Anakin and Padmé walked past.

  “Anakin, you’re bad,” Padmé said as they exited onto the dusty street.

  “It’s not like there are dozens of ships lined up to fill the bay,” Anakin replied, feeling pretty good about himself and the ease with which he had Force-convinced the piggish officer. He waved down a floating rickshaw pulled by an ES-PSA droid, a short and thin creature with a wheel where its legs should have been.

  Anakin gave it the address and off it went, pulling them behind in the floating rickshaw, charging along the streets of Mos Espa, expertly zigging and zagging to avoid the heavy traffic, and blasting forth a shrill sound whenever someone didn’t get out of the way.

  “Do you think he was involved?” Padmé asked Anakin.

  “Watto?”

  “Yes, that was his name, right? Your former master?”

  “If Watto has hurt my mother in any way, I will pluck his wings from his back,” he promised, meaning every word. He wasn’t sure how he would feel about seeing the slaver, even if Watto had nothing to do with bringing any harm to Shmi. Watto had treated him better than most in Mos Espa treated their slaves, and hadn’t beaten him too often, but still, it hung in Anakin’s thoughts that Watto had not let Shmi go with him when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had bought out his slave debt. Anakin understood that he was probably just deflecting some of his own guilt about leaving his mother with Watto, who was a businessman, after all.

  “Here, Espasa,” Anakin said to the droid, and the rickshaw glided to a stop in front of a shop all too familiar to Anakin Skywalker. There, sitting on a stool near the door, fiddling with an electronic driver on a broken piece of equipment that looked like a droid component, was a rounded, winged Toydarian with a long snout. A black round hat adorned his head, and a small vest was pulled as far as it would go about his girth. Anakin recognized him immediately.

  He paused for so long in just staring at Watto that Padmé got out before him and held her hand to help him.

  “Wait here,” she instructed the droid. “Please.”

  “No chuba da wanga, da wanga!” Watto yelled at the broken component, and at a trio of pit droids who were scrambling all about, trying to help.

  “Huttese,” Anakin explained to Padmé.

  “No, not that one—that one!” she replied, and at Anakin’s expression of surprise that she knew the strange language, she added, “You think it’s easy being the Queen?”

  Anakin shook his head and looked back to Watto, then glanced at Padmé once or twice as they neared. “Chut chut, Watto,” he greeted.

  “Ke booda?” came the surprised response.

  “Di nova, chut chut,” Anakin reiterated, his words barely audible above the clamoring pit droids.

  “Go ana bopa!” Watto yelled at the trio, and on his command, they immediately shut down and snapped back into their storage position.

  “Ding mi chasa hopa,” Anakin offered, taking the piece of the broken droid from Watto, and manipulating it expertly. Watto watched him for a moment, his buglike eyes growing even larger in surprise.

  “Ke booda?” he asked. “Yo baan pee hota. No wega mi condorta. Kin chasa du Jedi. No bata tu tu.”

  “He doesn’t know you,” Padmé whispered to Anakin, trying to hold back her laughter at Watto’s last statement, which translated to “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

  “Mi boska di Shmi Skywalker,” Anakin bluntly stated.

  Watto’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Who would be looking for his old slave? The Toydarian’s gaze went from Anakin to Padmé, then back to Anakin.

  “Annie?” he asked in Basic. “Little Annie? Naaah!”

  Anakin’s answer came with a deft twist of his hands, and the sound of the little piece of equipment whirring to life. Smiling widely, he handed it back to Watto.

  There weren’t many around who could work such magic on broken droid parts.

  “You are Annie!” the Toydarian cried. “It is you!” His wings started beating furiously, lifting him from the stool to hover in the air. “Ya sure sprouted!”

  “Hello, Watto.”

  “Weehoo!” the Toydarian cried. “A Jedi! Waddya know? Hey, maybe you couldda help wit some dead-beats who owe me a lot of money—”

  “My mother—” Anakin prompted.

  “Oh yeah, Shmi. She’s not mine no more. I sold her.”

  “Sold her?” Anakin felt Padmé squeeze his forearm.

  “Years ago,” Watto explained. “Sorry, Annie, but you know, business is business. Sold her to a moisture farmer named Lars. Least I think it was Lars. Believe it or not, I heard he freed her and married her. Can ya beat that?”

  Anakin just shook his head, trying hard to digest it all. “Do you know where they are?”

  “Long way from here. Someplace over on the other side of Mos Eisley, I think.”

  “Could you narrow it down?”

  Watto thought about it for a moment, then just shrugged.

  “I’d like to know,” Anakin said, his tone and expression grim and determined, even threatening. The way Watto’s features seemed to tighten showed that he got the hint that Anakin wasn’t fooling around.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Absolutely. Let’s go look at my records.”

  The three went into the shop, and seeing the place brought memories swirling back to Anakin. How many hours, years, he had toiled in here, fixing everything Watto threw his way. And out back, where he had put all the spare parts he could find, so that he could build a Podracer. Not all of the memories were bad, he had to admit, bu
t the good ones did not overcome the reality that he had been a slave. Watto’s slave.

  Fortunately for Watto, his records gave a location for the moisture farm of one Cliegg Lars.

  “Stay a while, Annie,” the Toydarian offered after sharing the information on Shmi’s new owner—or was it her husband?

  Without a word, Anakin turned about and walked away. This was the last time he would look at Watto and the shop, he decided. Unless of course, he found out that Watto was lying to him about Shmi’s fate, or that Watto had somehow hurt his mother.

  “Back to the lot, Espasa,” he said to the droid as he and Padmé rushed back to the rickshaw. “Fast.”

  “Ya sure I can’t get ya something to drink?” Watto called to them from the door of his shop, but they were already rushing away, kicking up dust in their wake.

  “Annie du Jedi,” Watto remarked, and he waved both his hands dismissively at the departing rickshaw. “Waddya know.”

  Anakin took the starship out even more furiously than he had brought it in, blasting away from the lot and nearly colliding with a small freighter as it maneuvered to put down. Calls of protest came into him from Mos Espa control, but he just switched off the comm and zoomed off across the city. Soon after, they passed over the race grounds where the younger Anakin had often raced in his Pods, but he barely glanced at it as he put the ship out straight over the desert, heading for Mos Eisley. When that port came into view, he veered to the north and crossed past it, moving higher in the sky.

  They spotted one moisture farm, and then another, and then the third, almost in a direct line from the city.

  “That one,” Padmé said. Anakin nodded grimly, and brought the ship down on a bluff overlooking the homestead.

  “I’m really going to see her again,” he breathed, shutting down the engines.

  Padmé squeezed his arm and offered him a comforting smile.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, to leave your mother like that,” he said.

  “I leave my family all the time,” she replied. “But you’re right. It’s not the same. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a slave, Anakin.”

  “It’s worse to know that your mother is one.”